Theck of Sacred Dutytalks about the block changes. (It astounds me that we have brilliant people like Theck playing the same game as a random death knight who thinks they can best improve their character by wearing spellpower cloth.)

Remember, Apotheosis is recruiting! Warlocks, an enhancement shaman and a feral druid tank (must be comfortable doing kitty DPS!) especially, but we’ve recently opened up recruitment to all kinds of DPS, so please do check us out!

Episode 53 is here and with it we look at talent options for Death Knights, Druids, Hunters, Mages and Paladins, with the other five classes coming next week. Note: we could be wrong about how cool any of this stuff is. We’re often wrong. Majik has been consistently wrong for nine years, for example.

I tweeted asking people to let me know what they were most looking forward to. Thanks to all for replying, please follow them!

@_Rades: GHOUL VOMIT (Vile Spew)@buglamp: bearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhugbearhug@Achloryn: I’M TAKING UNHOLY BLIGHT FOREVER@walkstweets: Boundless Conviction: Holy Power gets to get different than Combo Points! Hurray! Healing-wise, cooldowns are exciting between Void Shift (Priest), Vow (Priest) Ascendancy (Shaman), Healing Tide (Shaman)@TiaOfET: excited for the surprises as I have no idea what to expect other then what @DuridJaymz gave away!!@JoeEgo812: Anxious for losing Auras. Holy Avenger means I can use the Angry Man for AoE healing too.

Remember, Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is recruiting! Warlocks in particular, but we’d also look at a resto shaman, an enhancement shaman and other ranged DPS classes. We’re 4/8 HM in Dragon Soul and would love to see some apps!

Our topic for this 52nd episode is rated battlegrounds! What are they all about? How many people can play at once? What are some good strategies and tips for your RBG group? Our guest this week is Merkavah, a raider in Apotheosis who has taken charge of the Apotheosis RBG team.

BattlegroundTargets – a basic enemy raid frame to show you names, roles and specs of the enemy’s team.Healers Have to Die – an addon that points out enemy healers and also shows when your healers are in trouble.DeadlyBossMods – an addon with many PVE functions, this will also show you timers for flag captures and the like in BGs and RBGs.

Remember, Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is recruiting! Warlocks in particular, but we’d also look at a resto shaman, an enhancement shaman and other ranged DPS classes. We’re 3/8 HM in Dragon Soul and would love to see some apps!

Send us your comments, questions, submissions and such to podcast [at] blessingoffrost [dot] com! We’ll answer your questions on the show in our MOLL-E segment and would be happy to play most any audio submissions you send us. Be part of the show!

(Don’t forget to tweet #sadmoose to @Majjity on Twitter to prove to him that SADMOOSE IS A THING.)

Yet another episode of Blessing of Frost is out, ladies and gentlemen! Episode 51, released just three days after Episode 50, is out! Join us as we mock ourselves and each other after just four days between recording these last two episodes. Our General Chat topic is about tools and addons used to help out during raids.

Over the last seven years, there have been quite a few raids released and boy, the format of and entry into those raids has changed substantially. From crazy attunement chains to ones that were much simpler, from 40-man format, to 10-man format, to 25-man format, raids have changed a lot. We examine them in this episode!

@Sylaurian: To be honest Kurn, Molten Core, because it got me started on raiding and it was the one I had the most fun in.

@Kadomi: Ulduar. I loved the atmosphere and the lore, and Yogg-Saron was one of my absolute highlights. Beautiful raid.

@kenakabones: of all the raids.. its extremely close for me between Karazhan and Ulduar. Mainly because of the variety of the fights and for ulduar; the exponential growth of hard modes and the methods to unlock them. /wanders off looking at the shiny red button

@hestiahdruid: Kara and Ulduar, though I never saw either when it was current content, they were still fun as hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, Episode 48 comes to you today with a few changes to its normal quality. Partway through the Loremaster segment, Majik lost power at his place and so, after much scrambling, we finally managed to get him, myself and our guest, Gina (of healbot.net) on to Skype. The audio quality isn’t great at first, but does improve, though it’s still not at our normal levels of clarity, for which I apologize, and I encourage you all to blame Majik. (#powerisacrutch)

That said, we did get through the whole episode, which came in at almost two hours in duration! Our General Chat topic was… the Dragon Soul nerfs that are forthcoming next week.

An interesting graph of WoW’s subscriptions (all based on officially released numbers and reliable sources). It’s interesting because Burning Crusade came out in January of 2007, Wrath of the Lich King came out in November of 2008 and Cataclysm came out in December of 2010. World of Warcraft got up to 10 million concurrent subscribers before Wrath ever came out. It’s been since Wrath came out that subscriptions initially peaked at 12 million and then dropped off, before a slight uptime in Cataclysm, followed by a decrease.

Keep up to date with Gina at her blog, healbot.net (no, she is not the author of that addon!) and on Twitter, @healbot!

Speaking of Twitter, I asked folks about the nerfs and if they’d use them or not and a few people had things to say. Be sure to follow them!

@Stelshadow: Sovereignty US-Turalyon. 10 man normal. We are making progress on Spine and will probably go with the buff turned off.

WTSHeals: Mixed bag. Some of our raid wants it off. People like me don’t really care since it’s just for personal gain and not achieves. If there was an achieve for NOT using the buff, it might motivate us to not use it, otherwise we’re likely just gimping ourselves.

@BloodyGneisha: I see no problem with turning it off and seeing how far we can go. Our issue isn’t ability, it’s timing – everyone’s schedule sucks and it’s difficult to get everyone together.

@_Rades: We’re working on Madness, so if we don’t get him in our 2 nights before the nerfs hit, maybe we’ll be glad for them. Maybe not? :\ I imagine we’ll do without until we get him, unless we’re making no headway and it’s really stressing us out.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Blessing of Frost! Episode 47 is now out for your amusement and enjoyment, so sit back and relax as Majik and I discuss stuff from Monday, January 9th, including all about LFR, our General Chat topic of the week.

@Restoisepic: LFR so far: pros: easy way to get T13 if lucky and 50% of weekly valour in 2 bosses, Cons: the overall attitude seems to stink additionally, there are not enough sad mooses in there 🙁

@xmolder: I think it’s great, but loses its sheen after you’ve seen regular mode mechanics. Not that mechanics matter.

@RandyLite: LFR I despise it wholeheartedly, I have completed it on 5 alt’s and my main goes weekly for possible upgrades. Reminds me of the trollroics grind for slightly better gear. It teaches bad habits and really brings out the loot whore in ppl. 500 valor is nice but it feels like 3 or 4 trollroics rolled into one 2 hour endeavor.

@thereadycheck: i did a short write up on LFR conflicts. lot of bloggers talking LFR i know, seems like many within the last 2 or so weeks. http://www.thereadycheck.com/?p=1500 @WoWMiri@_vidyala@matticus had a great LFR posts as well!

@Derevka: You think its undertuned to the point where it fosters poor raiding habits? Not “too easy” per say, but poor habits not assisting the tank, not DPSing the strategic target, heroism/lust timing, standing in the proverbial fire…

@e_man41: lfr is a pointless exercise in being mad at people you don’t know over gear you don’t really need

@GottaHaveFaythe: LFR has caused me to lose interest in our progression raids. 🙁 I no longer get that special feeling of seeing a new encounter and then finally getting the kill. No joy or adrenaline rush. It just feels… Blah.. It’s sad! Our 25m team hasn’t been able to pull together a FULL team since it released. We’ve been doing 22-24m kills.

Hotfixes! There were some minor hotfixes that came out over the break and we also cover the ones that came out shortly after we recorded the podcast last time.

The winner of our contest was JoeEgo812! He made us an awesome MOLL-E bumper, which you’ll hear in this very episode. He chose a Lil’ KT as his prize, courtesy of Serrath! Again, thanks to Serrath for providing the prize and thanks so much to Joe for participating in the contest. The rest of you could, you know, submit stuff!

The I Took an Arrow in the Knee meme comes from the new(ish) game Skyrim, which both myself and Maj had the opportunity to play over the holidays. (In particular, this YouTube video – which is loud and NSFW – is pretty amusing.)

Tips from Twitter folks about the back-half of Dragon Soul — follow them!

@JoeEgo812: On Blackhorn, your raid only NEEDS to soak the Twilight Onslaught (large swirly). / Regenerative Bloods are easier to burst down on later platforms if you let them stack up & regen once before starting AOE.

@thereadycheck, re: Ultraxion: noticed so many 10 mans still 3 heal it when 2 healing is simple with good crystal use.

@miss_pewpew, re: fights where you should stack: Stack tight. I see soo many ranged sitting out of healing aoe circles *pulls my hair out*

Please note, we recorded on December 18th, so we don’t talk about these new hotfixes. Especially noteworthy? ZA and ZG have been nerfed and Deepsea Sagefish (the fish used to cook intellect food) now have their own pools!

The biggest thing to note is that we are holding a contest that ends at 11:59pm ET on January 1, 2012. The contest is send in an audio bumper for one of the following show segments:

The best bumper received between now and 11:59pm ET on January 1, 2012, will receive their choice of one of the $10 Blizzard pets in the Blizzard store, courtesy of Serrath! Audio bumpers should be in mp3 format and should be sent to us at:

podcast [at] blessingoffrost [dot] com

Icy-Veins is a great resource for raiders! Lots of description and detail on all the various mob/boss abilities. Of particular note, their comments on the Yor’sahj the Unsleeping encounter.